Ask Eat Like a Man: Ramen Tips for a Big-Time Rapper

Josh Ozersky is a James Beard Award-winning food writer, B-list food personality, and noted polymath and deviant. The founder of Meatopia, he will answer all your questions on meat, food, food writing, relationships, restaurants, or cooking. He is also available for private tutorials.

Mix the little packet in with the water while the noodle block is boiling. Just kidding. (Although that actually is a good trick.) Ramen is the latest home-cooking craze, and one of those dishes whose difficulty is the whole point of the enterprise, like survival camping or marriage. I've tried it three times, and all three times the noodles are what killed it (they were rubbery once and dissolved twice.) Since the noodles are really not the point of ramen (I can't tell one from another) I would suggest concentrating on the pork broth and other elements, and just putting fresh angel hair in at the end for a couple of minutes before serving. The other thing I would counsel is to use picnic shoulder rather than Boston butt; it has more collagen, and collagen is what counts when you make any kind of pork soup.

Go ahead and rinse it out with some soapy water. It won't destroy it. A well-patina'd pan can't be hurt without strenuous effort; that's the whole point of it. Things like cast-iron pans and high-quality steel knives are much tougher than you think, and in fact tougher than you can imagine. Just be sure you use a soft sponge and dry it well afterwards. I do this all time. It's no big deal. If your pan doesn't have a patina, you can do anything you want to it.

That rod is a honing steel; it's not for sharpening as much as for un-dulling the knife after it's been used a few times; basically, it straightens out the edge when it gets floppy, microscopically speaking. As for the sharpening wheels, if you don't know if they work, that means they don't. A sharp knife should be able to cut the folded edge of a magazine page. I have the 2004 September issue of Vogue set aside for this specific purpose. Last week I beheaded Gemma Ward.

I would say that you are safe at any temperature above absolute zero. No one gets trichinosis. You are more likely to be killed by a falling anvil than to get sick from trichinosis. I cook the very best pork, like ossabow or red wattle from local farms, to a pinkish hue the color of sunset, but that's just a textural preference. You could eat it raw if you wanted.

I mean, typically you want short rib for flavor, chuck for sweetness, and brisket for fat. But it doesn't really matter, as long as there is plenty of marbling and you are using all whole muscles. For my part, though, the best burger meat I've eaten was 100-percent aged (but not overaged) ribeye cap.

For me, right now, the best steak in the city, or at least the one I think about most often, is probably Marc Forgione's tomahawk steak with marrow butter at his eponymous restaurant. Everybody is doing marrow butter now, but his was the first and the best. I also like Costata a lot, which is, all things considered, the best restaurant experience among steakhouses, along with Porter House New York. Strictly speaking, the four things I look for in restaurant steak are 1) abundant marbling; 2) dry-aging in a clean, dry environment (Ii.e. one that doesn't taste like toe jam); live wood fire; and 4) well-developed crust that is brown rather than black. Black steaks are as bad as gray ones. By the way, I don't know of any restaurant that accomplishes all four things. If you do, by all means direct me to it.

Chris, let's start by saying that only an idiot would let their meat come to room temperature before cooking it. First of all, it takes forever. Second of all, it creates a veritable spa for bacteria; unless you want to end up like the Martians in The War of the Worlds, keep all your meat cold until you cook it. Most importantly — and this speaks to your searing question — the colder your meat, the easier it is to brown the surface without overcooking the meat within. Browning isn't cooking; it's a chemical reaction that happens at high heat. So, yes, brown it hard, and then move it off heat, via either the cold side of the grill or, if you are indoors, in a 300-degree oven. I should note here that Adam Perry Lang, the most innovative grill chef in the world, says not to bother, and to just keep flipping over high heat. I don't know what to think about this. I can't get my mind around it.

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